


Life or Death

by Asgardian_princess_5



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Futuristic society, Gen, Science Fiction, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asgardian_princess_5/pseuds/Asgardian_princess_5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story that I wrote for a Creative Writing class in high school, a little over a year ago. Basically a short piece about a dystopian society. Quick Warning: there are multiple mentions of death, but no gory scenes of that sort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life or Death

Yesterday was the day that I was supposed to die. Yet, here I am, still alive, scribbling down my story before they find me. If they find me, they'll kill me. I was supposed to die, but I cheated death.

My name is Cooper Heathrow. My birth date is March twenty-first of the year two thousand and ninety-three. My death date is January seventeenth of the year two-thousand, one hundred and twelve. I am eighteen years old and I am supposed to be dead.

Fifty-six years ago, the Society declared that we must all have a determined death date. This date would be calculated at birth. The death would occur directly after a citizen's "prime years" are over, the years when they are most dynamic and successful. By knowing when we are to die, we can make preparations more easily. We do not have to watch ourselves or our family members decline past their most fruitful years. The population numbers are controlled. Theoretically, everyone is a productive member of society because the unproductive ones no longer exist.

The declaration of a death date is a very complex and scientific process. At least, that's what we've been told by the school teachers. When we are born, we're taken to a room full of advanced scientific equipment. We are monitored for twenty-four hours by several nurses. After the data about our bodies and brains and genetic codes have been collected, it is used to calculate the exact day in which our prime years will end. A doctor creates and measures a specific amount of serum, based on these calculations, and injects it into the bloodstream. The serum contains millions of tiny, specifically-timed release capsules, which are filled with a mixture of chemicals that shut down the internal organs. Death is nearly instantaneous.

Of course, some people die before their planned death date. War, sickness, and inadvisable life choices may all result in the death of a citizen. The serum, however, never falters. It activates itself on the exact death date, every single time. It never takes effect before the death date, and most certainly never after.

 

I am not meant to be alive.

 

All I can think about is why the serum didn't take effect. Was my death date not calculated correctly? Did something inexplicable go wrong with the injection procedure when I was a baby? Or, was the serum itself faulty? I rule out the last possibility because I definitely felt something yesterday, and I know it was the serum beginning to take effect. It wasn't natural, and nothing else could have caused it.

It was nine o'clock at night and I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, wondering when I was going to die and knowing that I only had a precious, limited number of hours left. I felt like the anticipation of my death might kill me first, rather than the event itself. My heart raced at a rapid pace, but I couldn't slow it down. My palms were sweaty and I kept wiping them on the quilt that my mother had made for me four years ago, before she had died. I didn't know if I'd see her in an afterlife. I didn't even know if there _was_ an afterlife. All I knew for certain was that I was going to die within the next three hours, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

That was when I felt it. My heart stopped beating in my chest. It's a difficult sensation to describe. It's almost a hollow feeling, just emptiness inside. We take for granted that our heart always beats, but we never know what it feels like when it stops.

I panicked, knowing that my end was coming. I tried to slow my breathing to calm myself, but it was slowing already. My vision went blurry and my last thought was that I would die alone, without anyone around me, at an oddly young age. I would leave no legacy, no children to whom I could tell my life story. That was the moment when I lay down, closed my eyes, and accepted death.

Suddenly, my eyes snapped open. My heart began beating again and I sat up, gasping in deep breaths of air to fill my previously dysfunctional lungs. I was alive again, and it was the most miraculous and strangest thing I've ever experienced.

I came to the conclusion that the serum had failed. It had obviously started to work, but something in my body had stopped it, causing the serum to cease its purpose. I was still focused on how my own existence had not ceased when one terrifying thought pervaded my reactivated mind. 

The Society wanted me dead, but I was alive, and they would know. I remembered when we learned about the death serum in school. My teacher had mentioned trackers. The injection of the death serum also features a tracker that sends a signal to the Society's population database. The tracker records whether the person is dead or alive. The government knows that I began to die, but did not. The population must be kept under control. They will come after me.

As soon as my thoughts reached this conclusion, the emergency sirens rang out in the street. They are used to signal a lock-down. No one is permitted to leave the building in which they are present. It usually means the Society is hunting someone, and this time I knew that I was their target. I decided that it was in my best interests to run.

I grabbed only what I could carry in my backpack- just an extra set of clothes and some non-perishable food items- before fleeing. I slipped quietly into the street and stick to the back-roads and alleyways. There were more shadows that I could hide in and I knew that in a lock-down situation, any person who appeared outside would be considered a threat and shot on sight.

 

It's been two days since my escape and and the city is still crawling with police. They lifted the permanent lock-down so people could leave their homes, but they set curfews instead to control traffic. Officers in uniform patrol the streets constantly, looking for me.

I'm out of their reach. I'm lingering around the edge of the city now, making the woods my temporary home. I'm going to have to move soon. My food supply will run out in another day or two, and the police will eventually realize that I'm not in town anymore. I suppose I'll spend the rest of my life running.

 

I'm leaving this confession in my bag. If you're reading it, I had to drop everything and run, I really trust you, or I'm dead, as I should be. We take our lived for granted until we realize that they can be eliminated so easily. This is my warning to you: Don't make that mistake, like I did. Get out while you still can. Do not trust the Society, or anyone else, with your life. It's yours, and you alone have the right to decide how long to live it.

 

My name is Cooper Heathrow, and I am in a situation of life or death. _But you don't have to be_ _._


End file.
